Three Essential Skills

Tags

dynamics, flute embouchure, flute technique

You already know that blowing on a flute has many variables, maybe a bewildering number of variables. In speaking with a flute playing colleague who is also a band director recently, she told me that busy educators are looking for two or three simple steps they can follow to help their students play their instrument easily. So here are three essential things to communicate to your flute students at every stage of their development:

1. Find the optimum position for the flute on bottom lip. Do this by bringing the flute up from below to about where lip and chin meet. Avoid rolling down from the center. This places the blow hole too high to get a full, characteristic sound. The Legend of Kiss and Roll, Teaching Great Flute Sound, What is Transit Time
2. Balance the flute in your hands. Turn the headjoint slightly back to align between the key cups and the rods, rather than directly with the key cups. This puts the relatively heavy rods more on top so the flute can rest in your hands. No bracing needed even with all the fingers off the keys (like with C#-Db). It’s All About Balance, Balance and the Right Hand, Balance and the Left Hand
3. Shape the blowing aperture enough to focus the air stream and experiment with blowing angle. There is a subtle and intricate balance between top and bottom lip that is always adjusting to change registers, dynamics and control pitch, not to mention create different colors. Independence for Lips!, Warm Air, Cold Air

Try these three pointers with your students. Let me know how it works for you.

As always, if you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here.

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Troubleshooting Tone and Pitch Issues

Tags

beginning flute, embouchure, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute tone

Because there are so many variables involved in flute embouchure, there are an infinite number of problems that students can manifest in their tone quality and intonation. And as instructors it might seem we have to virtually be psychic to deduce the problem and offer solutions to our students. This is because so much is affected by things going on in the body that aren’t obvious from looking at a kid. Over the years I’ve been collecting a laundry list, so to speak, of tone/intonation problems and their solutions. Here are some common ones for beginner to intermediate students.

Problem: Windy, airy tone that is sharp

Solution: The aperture is too large and the blowing angle is too shallow. Blow through a smaller aperture and angle the air down more. You can achieve a steeper blowing angle by putting the flute lower on the bottom lip and reaching over with the top lip more, while maintaining the smaller aperture. The Legend of Kiss and Roll, Independence for Lips!

Problem: Dull tone quality, flat pitch

Solution: There is too much bottom lip covering the blow hole, and the flute is probably too high on the bottom lip. Move the flute lower on the bottom lip and roll out. There shouldn’t be more than 1/3 of the blow hole covered by the bottom lip. Also check alignment of the headjoint and balance of the flute. That alone can cause a student roll in and cover too much of the blow hole. It’s All About Balance

Problem: Strangled or pinched tone, can be flat or sharp depending how high or low the flute is on the bottom lip

Solution: This requires some sleuthing on your part because you have to identify the source of the constriction. There are at least four places I can think of that cause a pinched sound: 1) The lips themselves with a flattened and pinched aperture, 2) clenching the jaw with teeth too close together (common with kids who have braces, especially with rubber bands), 3) the back of the tongue is too high, constricting the airway, and finally, 4) the kid can actually be closing off the throat itself, as in activating the gag reflex. It takes some practice and discernment on your part to tell the difference which of these four constriction points are causing the problem. I can tell you that each one has a distinct quality that identifies it from the others, but it does take carefully listening and practice to recognize each one. Getting the Cart Before the Horse

Problem: Trouble producing third octave notes even with the correct fingerings

Solution: Third octave notes seem scary to kids. To them it seems like the natural thing that in order to control the third octave, they should roll in and pinch. After all, who wants to hear screeching high notes? This is precisely why they are having trouble. The solution, paradoxically, is to open up the blow hole a bit, support the air column more from the body core, and relax the grip of the aperture slightly. The speed of the air column itself will ensure the high note speak with ease. Warm Air, Cold Air

As always, if you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here.

Teaching Great Flute Sound

Tags

flute embouchure, flute pedagogy

If there is a secret to helping your students develop great flute tone, it is that you have to teach your students how to discover the optimal blowing angle. Once a flutist is able to define and understand the blowing angle for themselves, they will have it for as long as they play the flute. Since there is no such thing as an absolute one-size-fits-all solution for every flute player, experimentation is essential to developing a characteristic sound. Here are the parameters that need to be examined and experimented with:

• Placement on the chin/relation to the bottom lip – this is as variable as each of us is from another. Bring the flute up from below and feel the edge of the blow hole at the edge of the bottom lip for most people. People with a full bottom lip may need to put the flute up on the bottom lip itself. Conversely, if someone has really thin lips, it may need to be slightly below the lip. See The Legend of Kiss and Roll
• Aperture formation – whether the aperture is in the center of the lips or off to one side depends on the shape of the top lip. If the top lip is relatively straight, a centered aperture works well for most people. Otherwise, if there is a prominent teardrop in the top lip, an off-center aperture is the best choice. In most cases, it is better to have the aperture to left of center (toward the headjoint crown), but I have seen it work successfully with an off-center aperture to the right as well. See Flute Embouchure and a Teardrop Top Lip
• Help your students direct their attention to learning to use the aperture to focus and direct the air. Honestly, it isn’t necessary to give any thought to the corners of your mouth. Any attention on the corners causes the flute player to stretch their lips laterally, whether smiling, grimacing or frowning. It takes attention away from shaping and refining the aperture. Flute isn’t like other instruments where the issue is about interacting with a mouthpiece. For flutists, our embouchure is also our mouthpiece. The size and shape of the aperture is very similar to the opening in an oboe reed. Understanding the aperture is everything. See Our Lips are our Mouthpiece, “What do you do with your corners?”
• Give your students the tools to develop mobility and flexibility between top and bottom lips. The back and forth between lips gives control over register changes, pitch and dynamics. Of course you also need good control of air speed and pressure, but the flexibility is what makes the control of register, pitch and dynamics possible. A great place to start is with basic Octaves. See Independence for Lips, To Roll or Not to Roll: That is the Question
• Dealing with braces – the student who gets braces after playing for a while needs to reevaluate their blowing angle. The hardware in their mouth necessitates finding a different blowing angle. Experiment with placement on the chin and how open or covered the blow hole is. It will be different. It’s just a matter of finding a new angle. As treatment progresses and teeth move, this will continue to need reevaluation. It is an ongoing process and there isn’t a final solution until the student is done with the braces. See Helping Your Students Adjust to Playing With Braces

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here

What is Transit Time? And Why You Should Care

Tags

dynamics, embouchure, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy

When it comes to understanding how to teach your students to play with characteristic flute tone, it comes down to being able to teach your students to conceptualize the transit time and maintain consistency in the transit time. So what is transit time? It is the time from when the air exits the aperture to when it hits the strike edge of the blow hole. Having the optimal transit time has everything to do with whether the sound is focused and in tune rather than being dull, shrill, diffuse and out of tune.

In this blog, we have been looking at this issue in as many ways as I can think of over the last two school years. These articles include “The Value of Consistency“, “To Roll or Not to Roll“, “Independence for Lips“, “Why do my Flutes Sound Thin and Squeaky in the Third Octave?“, “What do you do with your corners?” and “The Legend of Kiss and Roll“.

Here is a video to demonstrate consistency in the transit time contrasted with rolling in and out. You will notice that when I am being consistent with my embouchure, I never cover more than about a third of the blow hole. You will also see that I often reach quite far over the embouchure hole with my top lip (I do have an overbite), but that the relationship of the bottom lip to the opening and blowing edge is consistent. When I roll the flute on my bottom lip, notice how much not only the pitch changes, but also the tone color. You will see that the amount of the blow hole you can see goes from less than half open to completely open. However, you can see when I restrict the movement to just my lips forward and back, I can still manipulate the pitch, but the amount of coverage of the blowing hole (approximately 1/4-1/3) remains the same. There is not nearly the change in color doing it this way than if I’m rolling the flute in and out. This is because when I am moving my lips independently, I am still maintaining consistent transit time, thus preserving the tone quality even while adjusting for register, dynamic or pitch.

There is no question that learning where to place the flute on your bottom lip and learning consistency in the transit time is a challenging idea to conceptualize. But it is also really the crux of the matter when it comes to producing characteristic flute tone. We have to rely on ourselves to develop that consistency rather than on the equipment as with reed or brass instruments.

Have a great summer, everyone. I may pop in occasionally over the summer with an announcement or two. And I’ll be back in the fall with more flute tips for you. If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances, click here

The Value of Consistency

Tags

embouchure, flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute tone

If you play a brass or reed instrument, there is a certain kind of consistency built into how you blow into the instrument by the mouthpiece itself. The internal dimensions and type of material of the mouthpiece play a huge part in determining tone quality on the instrument. The reason why there are so many kinds of mouthpieces for any given instrument is because we, ourselves are so variable….in terms of lip size, teeth size and shape, tongue size, and size and shape of the oral cavity and internal dimensions of our throat. And it is also partially why there is constant research and experimentation in the design of mouthpieces (another reason being because tastes in tone quality change with time). Brass and reed players are aiming at producing a characteristic and consistent tone for their instrument, as well as improving response and flexibility. If you want to improve the tone quality, try other mouthpieces.

The big difference with the flute is the player has to relate to a hole. It’s rather like having kids. As you well know, kids don’t come with directions. “Congratulations! You are a new parent. Go!” Nobody can tell you exactly how to relate to that hole. And yet flute players need to develop a consistency of approach with how the flute rests on the chin/bottom lip and maintaining the optimal distance between the aperture of the lips and the blowing edge (known as the transit time – the time from which the air exits the aperture to when it strikes the blowing edge). If you change it up by rolling in and out, you have no control of tone quality, tone color and intonation.

Here’s the challenging thing about learning correct placement and blowing angle…Each flute player has to discover this best place for themselves because of all the other inconsistencies of lips, mouth, tongue, teeth and throat. It’s somewhat akin to learning a string instrument, except maybe a bit less daunting. With strings, every parameter of playing is up for grabs including placement of the bow between the bridge and fingerboard, bow angle, placement of the fingers on the fingerboard for correct pitch, bow speed and pressure. Or like trombone, where one needs hear the pitch to know where to correctly place the slide for the note to be in tune. With the flute, we need to learn consistency in order to maintain the correct blowing angle and have control over tone quality, intonation and color.

Finally, I’d like to share a couple videos with you of flute players who know the importance of being consistent with maintaining the correct relationship with the blowing edge under extreme circumstances (i.e. while dancing). If these players didn’t understand this relationship as thoroughly as they do, they would not be able to maintain their beautiful tone throughout their performances. Here is Zara Lawler with Neil Parsons and Hilary Abigana of the Fourth Wall Ensemble. Be sure to check these out because you will see clearly that no matter what else they are doing, these players maintain the flute in relation their aperture at all times. There is no rolling in and out.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances,  click here.

 

Revisiting “To Roll or Not to Roll”

Tags

flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy

There isn’t time this week to do another full entry here on Dr. Cate’s Flute Tips so I’m sharing a link to the most read post since starting the blog – “To Roll or Not to Roll: That is the Question“. Helping flute students improve their intonation is an ongoing issue for all of us, band directors and flute teachers alike. Hope you find these suggestions helpful.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances,  click here.

Solutions for Common Third Octave Problems

Tags

embouchure, flute balance, flute embouchure, flute fingering, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute technique

The third octave on the flute is an interesting phenomenon because of the embouchure issues it presents and because of the technical and acoustic properties of the instrument. It is definitely not as straight forward as the lower two octaves in terms of the mechanics of the flute. The reason for all the cross fingerings and venting in the third octave is because each note is combining the harmonics of two lower pitches to reinforce the sound of each note. One of the easiest to conceptualize is the fingering for high E: T12|12(Eb) It is combining the overtone series of both E and A. In fact, if the air speed is insufficient, an out of tune A will sound below the intended pitch with this fingering. You can get to the high E by playing harmonics on either E or A. For E it will be the 4th partial and for A it will be the 3rd partial. The two combined make the standard fingering for third octave E (among flutists it is generally agreed that the E is better in tune without the Eb key).

Be sure your flute students know the third octave fingerings. It isn’t enough for them to just overblow a 1st/2nd octave fingering. They will be playing harmonics rather than the correct third octave fingering. The real fingerings will always sound more solid and will be easier to play in tune. Give them a way to practice these fingerings and test them on the practicing you assign. The kids need concrete ways to build their facility in the third octave.  Here is one way to practice third octave technique.

Then there are the common embouchure issues you see with kids. It is common for students to struggle with buzzing rather than playing the desired pitch in the third octave. What causes the buzzing? Their lips are stretched laterally, from corner to corner. If your kids are pulling their corners, there is a really high probability that they will buzz in the third octave. Have them pay more attention to how they are shaping the aperture in the middle of their lips (like how your lips are shaped to blow a kiss or to drink through a straw), and forget about the corners. Remember to blow!

Another common problem is trying to control the third octave by flattening the aperture, rolling the flute in and pinching. Usually what goes with this is insufficient blowing. Oh no! High notes! Cue the Psycho shower scene music! The results are going to be really sharp and likely unsuccessful beyond high E or F. They will be lucky to get to a G. You have to help unwind them. Flute lower on the chin, roll the flute out a bit, relax the corners, shape the aperture (think of saying “W”) and blow more. Make sure the flute is aligned properly, check hand positions and balance. It seems paradoxical that rolling the flute away from you a little bit would improve the response and intonation of the high notes, but it works like magic. Check out this device (Flute Tutor) that can help enforce this positioning with your students.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics, workshops and performances,  click here.

Getting the Cart Before the Horse

Tags

beginning flute, dynamics, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students, flute tone, vibrato

And the unintended consequences

There is no question that developing a wide dynamic palette and intelligent use of vibrato are essential skills for any aspiring flute player. Dynamics and vibrato add dimension and polish to the playing of individuals and within a flute section. However, I advocate waiting a bit before introducing these skills with your youngest players. Why? Because it is so critical for beginning flute players to master good embouchure and blowing skills first. Keep in mind that flutists don’t have a mouthpiece per se. We are relating to a simple hole that sits under our bottom lip. Our lips are our mouthpiece. Lips need to be trained to provide proper resistance, as we have discussed in other entries on this blog. And strong, supported blowing is an issue for any wind instrument beginner. Give your students the opportunity to solidify these skills before you introduce dynamics and vibrato.

When you ask your flute students to play with dynamics before they have mastered the basics of blowing and embouchure, the consequences can be quite dire, even to the point of them quitting altogether. Short of quitting, kids get into all kinds of compensating behaviors in order to do what you are asking of them. The kids resort to various kinds of constriction of the air stream, all of which sound really bad. They include pinching or biting down on the aperture (think about the sound of letting the air out a balloon while stretching the opening of the balloon), clenching of the teeth (also a tight and constrained sound, in extreme cases can lead to TMJ problems), and closing the throat. Once kids form the habit of constricting the air to play more quietly, it is a huge task (and often unsuccessful) to convince them that there is a better way to control their dynamics by controlling the amount of air and the blowing angle. Kids are smart. If it sounds bad and feels bad (which is how any kind of constriction feels), why continue? It is discouraging and frustrating for them. They will find other outlets for their creativity that are more rewarding.

There are similar problems that occur when you try to start kids playing with vibrato too soon. It has been shown that flute vibrato emanates from the epiglottis, the flap of tissue that blocks our wind pipe for us to swallow. It pulses but doesn’t completely close off the wind pipe when we play the flute. Again, it is absolutely essential for a student to develop a strong, steady, supported air column before introducing vibrato. If they don’t, the vibrato will be the most noticeable thing about their tone and it will not be possible to control the speed or amplitude of the pulse. Too heavy a vibrato is definitely worse than playing with a straight but supported air column. Teaching vibrato too soon is also a distraction and discouragement to ever learning steady blowing. Why set kids up for failure and disappointment?

Teach your students to blow and how to develop a flexible, sensitive embouchure first. This can take a year to two years of playing. Then adding in dynamic control and vibrato is a relatively simple job. In fact, there’s a good chance that these skills will just magically appear in your flute players if they are well grounded in the basics of sound production and musical phrasing.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Relating to the Flute

Tags

beginning flute, flute embouchure, flute intonation, flute pedagogy, flute tone

Tracking down the origins of Kiss-n-Roll

Frankly, I have been puzzled why the Kiss-n-Roll approach to flute embouchure is still a thing among school music educators. There is so much information available, flutists teaching flute methods classes and so many flutists who care deeply about how students learn flute embouchure discussing how to correctly teach students how to relate to the flute that it seems amazing that the Kiss-n-Roll is still around at all. People like Patricia George, Phyllis Avidan Louke and Jennifer Cluff have written and blogged about teaching basic flute embouchure. On this blog, I’ve written on this very topic at least three times in the year and a half I’ve been doing it.

Then last weekend, I had a very interesting insight into the pervasiveness of this phenomenon. While I was up in Wisconsin doing clinics and presenting at a flute festival, I had an enlightening discussion with a band director at one of the schools. His main instrument is trombone. He showed me what he understands about teaching flute embouchure. When he demonstrated, he rolled the flute down from the middle of his lips and made a sound typical of a beginner to intermediate flute player. I asked where he had learned the Kiss-n-Roll. He said he thought no one in particular had told him to do it that way, it just seemed the easiest way to relate to the flute. And that is when the lights went on for me. He is trying to relate to the flute lip plate the way he knows how to relate to his trombone mouthpiece! Doing this makes the flute seem less foreign, more familiar to what he already knows and can do well.

Here is the harsh reality, folks. Rolling the flute down on the lip into playing position is never going to help your students develop a truly characteristic flute tone. Why? Because it places the flute too high on your lip to get the maximum resonance out of the instrument. The transit time (time from when the air exits your lips to when it hits the strike edge of the embouchure hole) is too short. The sound will always be small, often windy, sharp and unfocused.

So what happened when I asked the band director to try bringing the flute up into position from underneath as I’ve discussed numerous times on this blog? Bingo! He instantly had a stronger, more focused flute sound than I think he had ever achieved in the past. Granted, it took him out of his comfort zone as far as how to relate to the flute. The difference in the sound he made was a huge improvement.

Parting words for today? You cannot relate to the flute embouchure plate in the same way you relate to your brass mouthpiece. There is not going to be direct contact with your lips. Bring the flute up from below and learn to feel the inside edge of the embouchure hole about where your lip and chin meet (this can vary with the size and thickness of your lips). In order to get the best sound out of a flute, you need to let go of your attachment to the feeling of having contact with the middle of your lips. When you understand this and can explain this to your students, you will see a huge difference in the tone quality your students can achieve. The flute is a completely different animal from any other winds or brass. To achieve a characteristic tone, it is necessary to learn to relate to the flute on its own terms.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.

Developing Better Breath Control

Tags

beginning flute, breath control, flute embouchure, flute pedagogy, flute students

Good breath control is an important issue for any wind instrument, but can be especially problematic for flute players because we don’t have a mouthpiece like the other winds and brass. As I tell my own students, everyone else has a mouthpiece and we have a hole. It is no wonder that breath control becomes such an issue for flute students, especially in the early stages.

A long time ago, a voice teacher pointed out to me that breathing to sing or play a wind instrument is different from regular breathing in one significant way. The relative speed of the breathing cycle is reversed. Here’s what this means. As you are sitting there reading this post, notice that you inhale relatively slowly and exhale quickly. When we sing or play a wind instrument, we need to inhale quickly and exhale much more slowly, and at a controlled rate. Teaching this to youngsters is a tricky thing. If you ask kids to take a deep breath, they will probably lift their shoulders and tense their necks. As you know, you have to relax through your trunk and allow everything to open up (ribs and abdomen) and allow the diaphragm to contract downwards. (N.B., you can’t make your diaphragm contract anymore than you can make your heart beat. The diaphragm has the same kind of nerve endings as your heart. It just does it’s job. It will work most efficiently in the breathing cycle if you focus on being relaxed and open through your chest and abdomen.) To demonstrate to kids how to breathe naturally, I have them lie on the floor on their backs with their knees bent. Then I have them pay attention to how their abdomen rises and falls with their breath. Finally, I have them reverse the cycle by inhaling quickly and exhaling slowly while still lying on the floor. When we sit up again, they have a much better sense of how to take an easy, full breath.

In orchestra, I’ve always been envious of the ability of oboe players to spin a long line. They can seemingly sustain their blowing forever compared to what we can do as flute players. Why is this? It’s because they have the natural resistance of blowing into the tiny reed opening. We flute players need to create more resistance in order to have better breath control at every stage of our development. For beginners this means learning to shape a really small aperture with our lips, about the size of the opening of an oboe reed in fact. The aperture needs a fair amount of firmness to create the resistance necessary to spin the air column and sustain our blowing. As young players develop, they need to learn to pay attention to how efficient they are being with the air. Even if the aperture is the correct size and firmness, it is endemic to the flute that we frequently blow more air than is necessary. Provided the flutist is taking in enough air, the trick is to get more sound by using less air more efficiently.

If you find these entries useful, please subscribe, share with your colleagues and come back regularly for more flute tips. Feel free to comment. If you have a topic you would like to see explored more fully, you can contact me via IM/Messenger on Facebook or email me at dr_cate@sbcglobal.net. For information about clinics and workshops click here.